The cast of Holly Goldberg Sloan’s Counting by 7s is united by grief, grit, and the radical act of making a life together. When a catastrophe upends a brilliant outsider’s world, the ordinary people around her discover extraordinary reserves of courage and care. Their intersecting journeys turn a rundown apartment complex into a living testament to found family and second chances.
Main Characters
Willow Chance
Willow Chance is a 12-year-old genius whose obsessions with the number seven, botany, and medical diagnostics make her both keenly observant and socially adrift. After losing her adoptive parents, she is plunged into profound Grief, Loss, and Healing, yet her quiet resolve catalyzes a new Found Family and Community around her. Though initially withdrawn, Willow’s analytical clarity and capacity for love draw in Mai, Pattie, Dell, and Jairo, who each choose to protect and be changed by her. Her garden project at the Gardens of Glenwood becomes a living emblem of Growth and Renewal, mirroring her shift from isolated prodigy to the gentle force binding a family.
Mai Nguyen
Mai Nguyen is Willow’s first true friend and the pragmatic spark who refuses to let the system swallow her. Fearless with adults and steady under pressure, she engineers the stopgap plan that places Willow under her mother’s care and then shoulders the emotional labor of keeping everyone moving forward. Mai’s loyalty anchors the group—she corrals her brother, holds Dell to account, and advocates for Willow with a seasoned clarity beyond her years. Through protecting Willow, she grows from stalwart sister to the moral center of a burgeoning household.
Pattie Nguyen
Pattie Nguyen, a disciplined salon owner and survivor of hardship, initially hesitates to take on more responsibility but cannot turn away from Willow’s need. Once she commits, she imposes order on Dell’s chaos, makes a home out of scarcity, and models tough, uncompromising care. Pattie’s bond with Willow deepens into fierce guardianship, while her partnership with Jairo adds stability and hope. By choosing legal responsibility for Willow, Pattie cements the found family’s foundation and becomes its unflinching matriarch.
Dell Duke
Dell Duke starts as a hapless school counselor who hides behind labels and clutter, only to be dragged—then guided—into competence by the people who occupy his life. Willow shatters his rigid categories, Pattie commandeers his apartment and conscience, and Quang-ha offers him the first authentic connection he’s had with a student. Forced out of inertia, Dell starts running, takes responsibility for the building, and learns to show up for others. His transformation from evasive bystander to engaged caregiver is one of the novel’s clearest portraits of personal redemption.
Supporting Characters
Quang-ha Nguyen
Quang-ha Nguyen, Mai’s sullen older brother, resents the upheaval Willow brings but gradually reveals a gifted artist’s eye and a guarded heart. His sketches, stained-glass skylight, and garden designs become bridges to belonging, while his banter with Dell evolves into an unlikely mentorship. By investing in the collective projects, he shifts from reluctant participant to a quietly protective member of the family.
Jairo Hernandez
Jairo Hernandez is a gentle taxi driver who interprets his chance meeting with Willow—and her sharp medical advice—as a sign that he can change his life. He enrolls in college, shows up for the family with practical steadiness, and grows into a paternal presence defined by reliability rather than grand gestures. His partnership with Pattie in seeking guardianship gives Willow a secure future and gives Jairo a purpose that eclipses his earlier drift.
Roberta and Jimmy Chance
Roberta and Jimmy Chance are Willow’s adoring adoptive parents whose sudden deaths set the plot in motion. Through Willow’s memories, they remain the emotional touchstone of the story: kind, playful nurturers who cultivated her passions for gardening and science. Their legacy—unconditional love—becomes the blueprint Willow follows to design a new home.
Minor Characters
- Lenore Cole: An overextended but conscientious social worker whose procedural constraints underline what the found family must overcome to stay together.
- Sadhu Kumar: Dell’s prickly, perfectionist neighbor turned reluctant roommate, whose orderliness and habits help push Dell toward adult responsibility.
- Henry E. Pollack: The nursery owner and family friend whose generous plant donation makes the apartment garden possible, extending the web of community care.
- Principal Rudin: The administrator who mistakes Willow’s brilliance for cheating, inadvertently steering her toward Dell and the chain of events that follows.
Character Relationships & Dynamics
At the Gardens of Glenwood, the characters coalesce into an unconventional household where roles crystallize through action: Pattie and Jairo provide parental steadiness, Willow becomes the quiet center, Mai assumes day-to-day leadership, Quang-ha contributes talent and emerging loyalty, and Dell evolves into the bumbling-but-earnest adult who finally shows up. Their alliance forms not from sentimentality but from repeated choices to protect one another—rides given, papers signed, meals shared, and a neglected courtyard turned into a thriving garden.
The friendship between Willow and Mai is the story’s bedrock, pairing Willow’s incisive calm with Mai’s decisive courage; together they create a feedback loop of trust that carries them through bureaucratic hurdles and private grief. Pattie and Jairo’s bond grows in the background, rooted in mutual respect and a shared commitment to Willow rather than romantic spectacle, which lends the family a durable, practical stability. Meanwhile, Dell and Quang-ha forge a side-door connection through humor and television that slowly matures into accountability and encouragement, proof that care can arrive in awkward packages.
Conflicts—Quang-ha’s resentment, Dell’s avoidance, the system’s indifference—are absorbed and redirected by collective purpose, with the garden serving as both symbol and engine of unity. As each character accepts responsibility for the others, their identities shift from isolated roles to interdependent ones, transforming a loose network of acquaintances into a resilient, chosen family.